I've got some serious story-writing planned for Fenspace, but I probably won't be able to do it until RL stops kicking my ass. I expect to be offline for a couple weeks or so. e_e
In the meantime, though, I've posted a few bits of information about my character, his space station, and supporting cast. I requested a reality-check for my preliminary estimates on how big his station should be in Kokuten's Land Size thread...
But I figure I should ask for opinions on some of the other stuff I've stuck in the Ship Registry and Character Profile sections:- the writeups for The Floating Island and Eric Zhu.
Potentially, er, problematic are a couple claims there. The writeup states the Island was the first Fenspace ship/station of its kind. The first to boost chunks of land into orbit. Y'know, making a building and the surrounding real estate spaceworthy, yeah?
That's there because...well, I suggested that notion in the original thread. I think. >_>; The Island also launched early in the timeline, and it's comparatively primitive (initially, only pressurised buildings and basements), as opposed to, say, what Bob's got, or what other flying houseowners have done... the only tricky thing Eric and his crew did was prove you could handwave soil with enough digging. So the assertion makes sense, but I dunno...
The other thing is Eric's biomod. It verges on the superpower side...but it does come from physical alteration to his body. He's basically, er, wireless networked. To any 'waved systems on his station.
There's also a lot of assorted weirdness about the Island, evident in its writeup. But I have reasonable explanations for most of them. Mostly revolving around the strangeness of its 'waved service droid army. They move things when people aren't looking, see.
-- Acyl

GENRE DIRECTIVE:
This is not a dystopia.
Fenspace is intended to be an optimistic near-future space opera. What this means is that neither the Earth nor the rest of the solar system are wracked by wars, corruption, crime, environmental collapse, peak oil, etc. At least, no more so than as of where we stood on New Year's Day, 2007. There are potential rough patches ahead, but the bulk of humanity is looking forward and has better than even odds of making it through with civilization still intact. There are still Big Bads, a shadowy conspiracy or two and plenty of mooks for the heroes to smack around of course, but they are defeatable.
In this light, those who wish to write stories involving catastrophic Mundane wars using handwavium-enhanced weaponry, the total corruption & greed of earthbound politics, the general apathy and/or suckiness of the human race, etc. are kindly invited to do their own thing elsewhere.
(Any attempt to argue that the world must suck because it's "realistic" will fall on deaf ears. As a wiser man than the Management once said, "Only a bitter little adolescent boy could confuse realism with pessimism.")
THE RULES:
Rule #0: This is a collaborative writing project, which means there's a whole bunch of people adding their ideas to the pot. As a contributor, you're expected to behave like the adults that you are (or at least are pretending to be on the internet) when participating. As the man said, "Don't be mean. We don't have to be mean."
a) Offering constructive criticism (why don't you do this?) is good. Saying 'you can't do that' is not constructive.
b) Since this is a collaborative writing project, no one writer can hog all the Good Stuff without upsetting the other writers. Don't step on anyone else's toes - don't consume too much Cool at once, don't try to be better than the already-established "best in Fenspace" at something, and talk with people before you do things that No One Else Can Do.
c) When Rule #0 conflicts with any other rule, Rule #0 trumps the other rule. As Mustrum Ridcully would put it, they're "more of a guideline".
Rule #1: Handwavium is like a cat; it doesn't go where you tell it to, it goes where it wants to. If you're trying to get a random device with no plan in mind, then that's exactly what you'll get. If you have a specific device or set of devices in mind, you will get something close but not exactly identical to your specifications within these limits:
a) You can't show handwavium a picture of your desired genre vehicle and have it build one for you.
b) Handwavium has to be combined with existing hardware in order to accomplish anything. For best results the device should have some tangental relationship to the desired end goal: a car's engine becomes a spacedrive, a fence becomes a collapsible air dome, a laptop becomes an AI-capable supercomputer, etc.
c) Handwavium has quirks. The more complex and interesting the device you're trying to build is, the quirkier it will be on average.
i) Some strains of handwavium are quirkier than others.
ii) Quirks don't apply to critical life-support systems - air, water, food, sewer. Power systems can be quirky, but never to a life-threatening extent.
d) If handwavium is like a cat, then using it to create weapons is like giving a cat a bath; difficult and full of extreme pain. To wit:
i) Any attempt to use handwavium to create advanced genre weapons (phasers, antimatter bombs, any type of anime death ray, etc.) will fail without reservation.
ii) Handwavium is not naturally explosive, either chemically or nuclear. Adding handwavium to an explosive device will just destroy the handwavium.
iii) Handwavium can be used to enhance simple weaponry (swords, knives, staves, clubs, etc.) but the enhancement will not increase the total effectiveness as a weapon - a waved sword may not need further sharpening, but it won't become a Hackmaster +12.
iv) Weapons designed and built using no or effectively no (=
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

Shared world fictional superheroic sort of thing follows.

===============================================
"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"

It took us two minutes with a 'waved scalpel to cut the remains of his space suit free. Sal and I were both sure he was a goner. No respiration, almost no pulse, and blood everywhere. No cuts, though. No open wounds. Just blood, around his mouth and down his front and covering the inside of his suit. We both figured the poor guy had major internal hemorraging from his suit rupture, massive internal bleeding, that kind of thing.
Crewing the first ambulance in space, we'd both seen this kind of thing before. Today, we'd seen it far too often. With the battle between the Reavers and the SOS-dan still in progress, wed probably be seeing it all day.
Sally hopped into the front to set our course while I tried to keep our two passengers alive. The one on the right would live. Steady breathing, wearing an oxy mask. He probably had a concussion. He was the lucky one.
The other guys on the ship hadnt had suits when their hull had been holed. One of them had been badly cut up, probably by shrapnel. Two more had died from exposure. The other guy through
The last one was the mystery. He had a suit, but it was badly holed. Hed managed to tie it off with a dead mans belt, but it had apparently been leaking slowly. When we got to him, the pressure in the suit was almost as low as Mars surface. And the internal bleeding. But for no good reason we could tell, he wasnt dead.
Fighting off an urge to procrastinate further, I go over and check him. Not breathing. Pulse, but weak as hell. Blood pressure well below normal. That, at least, is something that can be addressed. Hoping that it won't cause more internal bleeding, I hook him up to an IV and sit back to watch my patients.
"Not this again!" Minerva said. "Albus, it was You-Know-Who, not you, who marked Harry as his equal. There is no possible way that the prophecy could be talking about you!" - Harry Potter and the Method of Rationality, Chapter 84

Yes, as you can see, I'm bored, and I'm stalking Fenspace. Think of me as a lassiez-faire hippy Scirroco. He'll help keep the universe together, I just want you in it.
I challenge anyone who's been lurking Fenspace to man up and throw up a ship descriptor/origin story.
I pledge to have a constructive critique on any additional ship or people posts done before 9pm tonight, done before 9pm tonight.
There's at least one person who's sitting here waiting, and would love to see any additional content.
Write!Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979

Grover's Corners is VERY well estimated as to size in acres vs. dimensions, Bob.
www.agric.gov.ab.ca/app19...ndarea.jsp
gives a radius of 1862', giving a diameter of 3724', for a 250 acre circle. That's close enough that I'm not going to quibble - I'm going to thumbs up and cheer.
The stated 3900' diameter, radius of 1950', gives a 274 acre chunk, which is fine too.
Hephaestus, at ten acres of Alaska, is 700' x 622', for an exact ten acre chunk. I have to admit, though, I stoled the chunk of land that forms the 'prow', so my measurements are a bit off.
S. Hoffswalsh Field, being a residential parcel, doesn't seem unlikely at 155' x 270', giving a .96 acre postage stamp - this is what you would get if you horked my current home out of the ground, land and all, only smaller. Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979

I've been driving myself bonkers today, punching down cat5 and juggling Fenspace tech, and here are the results. Pending societal disapproval, here is the basic tech Hephaestus and the Boys are based on, and a couple of our products.
Please be gentle on any shoot-downs, it's midnight or thereabouts, and I'm exhausted, but I can't sleep.. stupid Muse.
Any designs are 'copyright' to Hephaestus - we need a term for this, since Copyright has legal implications in the real world, and I think we would be wise to have a way to indicate intellectual property that is for sale, as opposed to open source, in the Fenspace. I suggest 'Commercial design' versus 'Open design'.
Open Design
Carbon Fiberweed
The original fireweed plant was staked to and around a carbon fiber rod, dusted with carbon fiber, and painted with base strain 'wavium. We ended up with a plant that grows signifigantly more and signifigantly higher than a 'normal' fireweed, is much darker (dark DAARK green leaves, near-black green stalk, and gloss black flowers) than normal, and is capable of doing 30 feet of height in an Earth environment. First-gen Carbon Fiberweed cannot survive unprotected in space.
Environmental Plants
These Devil's Club plants were a 'lucky shot' handwave. The original smells very pleasant and grows anywhere, on anything. It is the devil. The waving process began with 'shaving' a Devil's Club, removing the hurty parts from the stem. The plant was jacketted in a thin plushy layer of velour, dark green in color, and subjected to a 2-week tape loop of environmental propaganda on the role of green plants in restoring oxygen to the environment. Watching right along with it was a can of base 'wavium. At the end of the time period, we repotted the Devil's Club in the 'wavium, and we ended up with a low-slung plant that has no thorns, grows swiftly, produces oxygen like gangbusters, and, indeed, _requires_ carbon monoxide or dioxide in fairly good quantities to thrive. The environmental bay on Hephaestus is equipped with smudge pots for this very reason.
Quirks: Environmental Plants require lounge music, the schlockier and more '70s the better. Research into this has indicated that the velour fabric intended to make a more 'cuddly' plant was from a late 70s manufactured pair of pants. When asked further, Raven indicated that yes, the pants were 'very funky'.
With _too_ clean of an atmosphere, Environmental Plants will stop growing and shed leaves to minimize themselves.
Cuttings of these are available from Hephaestus.
EzCode Parsing Error: size=5]Commercial Des
Adjusted Mass Reactionless Rotor[/b]
The Adjusted Mass Reactionless Rotor is a design based in part off of the Firefly engine seen in Serenity. in the Hephaestian version, the rotating shell contains a stationary crankshaft, with a strange handwaved material in its lobes. The shell contains control electronics and a similar and complimentary handwaved emitter, which repels the material in the lobe of the crankshaft.
The rotor can be made in a myriad of shapes and output levels, with no upper or lower limit in sight. So far, the control system has been built into the shell, and we've no plans to move it out.
An astute reader may have noticed that the rotor itself just.. rotates. This is true, and the second part of the Adjusted Mass Reactionless Rotor is the Motivator. The Motivator is an ingot of the same strange handwaved metal used in the rotor, with similar emitters either static mounted or on armatures surrounding the ingot. While the _material_ is the same between the Rotor and the Ingot, the emitters have a totally different purpose. In the Rotor, the emitters push, and the static crankshaft is the 'reactionless newton-cheating sumbitch', to quote my father on the subject. In the Ingot, the emitters are the fulcrum, the electricity is the lever, and the Ingot actually transmits the force of movement to the vehicle.
For instance, the rotor in any of the Suburbans is inside the engine compartment, where one would normally expect it. In the initial buildup, the propulsion ingot was placed where the transfer case was. This ended up being too cramped and too far forward for the appropriate 'center of movement', and it was moved backwards, making room for a larger generator plugged into the back end of the rotor.
In cars like V and Millie, again the rotor replaces the engine, and a 'propulsion ingot' replaces the transmission or is mounted into the car's frame at an appropriate location.
In conclusion - the Rotor develops, through reactionless repulsion, rotational force, which is used to turn an electric generator. The available electricity is pushed through 'waved emitters and generates reactionless repulsion via the Ingot. When a 'pure' road style is needed, all Hephaestian vehicles can use in-wheel electric motors to crank right along, and keep a few high-grade resistance coils in the design for 'generative-wastative braking'.
Functionally speaking, the rotor/ingot combo provides a single-point vector introduction capability. On a single-ingot rig like the Suburban, the force generation is nowhere near as efficient in 'rotation' as it is linearily. This is due to the single-point factor, and one of the reasons V is so agile. With a smallish Ingot replacing each of her differentials, she can push her front end and back end at different vectors.
'Clean Queen'
The airlocks in the shuttles and shops of Hephaestus are composed of 'waved Visqueen. We setup a spooler that rolled the visqueen through a trough of liquidized 'wavium, and it came out signifigantly tougher, better insulating, and nearly optically clear. The stuff is not very strong against piercing or cutting attacks, however, and even a hardtech small handgun could penetrate it.
Airlocks
The airlocking system used by Hephaestus are based off of a 'queen sheeting, and the fasteners are 3-inch wide strips of velcro, with a central zipper. The Velcro/zipper is glued on with a 'waved adhesive, which appears to now bond on a molecular level. The velcro has been painted with liquidized 'wavium, as well as the zippers. They hold well, pressure testing would pop the visqueen sheeting before the seal would leak.
The Really Right Stuff
The glue used to assemble the airlocks is a mix of liquid 'wavium and 'right stuff' RTV rubber gasketting adhesive. The resultant stuff is less gooey and more liquid than the original RTV, but can still be applied from a 'squirt gun' with care, or brushed on. On non-metal surfaces, it produces a molecular bond. On metal surfaces, it's a powerful adhesive, but fails under any force harder than 'signifigant'.
Battle Steel
Hephaestus is setup to produce steel, among other finished metals. The steel bar stock is sometimes melted back down, and a specific stain of 'wavium is mixed in, and vaccum-cooled. The resultant product is slightly lighter than conventional steel, resists corrosion, and so long as there are active 'personell' (as opposed to just people)maintaining it, maintains it's strength. Battle Steel is _signifigantly_ stronger than conventional steel plate, resists corrosion per stainless steel, and has to be cut with either overwhelming force or special tooling/drill bits/saw blades. Laser cutting requires either overwhelming force or a 'wave collimated focussing system.
Quirks: When confronted with 'overwhelming' force, Battle Steel tends to shatter, due to the sheer amount of energy imparted to _cause_ a rupture. A Reaver 'impact breacher' would bounce if on anything but an exact perpendicular, but if it does get that perfect angle, it stands a good chance of either cracking the panel or sending a 'spall' shard bouncing across the space inside the violated panel.
Silver Handwavium
Silver Handwavium was a conventional strain mixed with silicon and graphite dust, automatic transmission fluid, wd-40, and fed several hours of infomercials on the benefits of high-grade lubricants. The resulting thick-oil-paint type liquid can be aerosol sprayed, painted from a can, or squirtgunned onto a bearing surface. On a non-frictionized surface, this strain merely flakes up and powders away. On a surface that requires lubrication (bearings, hinges, latches, locks), the 'wavium soaks in and provides a near-perfect interface. The interface is not frictionless, but it's as close as can be obtained by solid work.
Quirks: The strain requires occasional Exuberant Appreciation! of it's Amazing Effectiveness! and Economical Pricing! to maintain its lubricity. Thankfully, you'll notice it stop working nearly as well before it 'goes away' and requires a new application.
Black Handwavium
Black handwavium was produced from several 'high performance' classic car mags, a can of base strain, and a tape-loop of documentaries on internal combustion and nascar race engine design. The 'wavium _knows_ what makes internal combustion tick, and likes the idea. Application of this can be as simple as an oil change, or as in depth as a teardown and parts soak. Naturally, the more effort you put into it, the more benefit you will get out of it.
An engine exposed to an 'oil change' level of Black Handwavium will reseal it's cylinders, stop clattering, run somewhat better than factory (depending on level of damage/neglect), and fill several oil filters with gunge in short order.
A full 'teardown/parts soak' will result in an engine that is signifigantly structurally stronger than stock, with all that implies. If an ECM or carbeuration setup is adjusted properly, higher RPM range, more boost, higher compression, more agressive timing, all can be sustained. A stock engine given this treatment will not run that much better than stock - even if everything under the lid is right, the programming/design is aiming for a particular performance level.
Ultimate performance gain from 'Wavium black is in the high performance internal combustion engine, where treatments will cause oil to flow smoother, fuel to burn better, and motors to last longer. Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979

Clear your calendars, folks.
Global: @Jimmy Amp
"Broad-minded is just another way of saying a fellow's too lazy to form an opinion." -- Will Rogers

This is in direct response to some people's vocal disapproval of my character coming up with a weapon. One of these people has said that "blowing up stuff for great justice" shouldn't be allowed; I think that the agreed-upon setting already allows it. Here is some of my reasoning:
First, on weapons in general: There's been some discussion about what the first major crossover storyline is going to be. Some people have taken to calling it "Fenspace: Season One". It's a war. More specifically, it's a war initiated by the SOS-dan. If "blowing up stuff for great justice" isn't allowed, then how the devil do the SOS-dan expect to be able to fight a war? Forbidding weapons necessarily makes the entire Convention thread non-canonical, by my logic.
Second, on 'waved weapons: Hulls treated with 'wavium are extremely resilient, to the point that they resist mundane weaponry. (They used to be inpenetrable, but that notion was out-voted.) Reavers attack ships for loot and prisoners. Ships that hit objects at the fractions of lightspeed that we've agreed ships use in Fenspace are destroyed, releasing energy in the megaton-equivalent range. A necessary corollary to these three data points is that reavers do not ram ships. If there are no weapons more powerful than mundane weaponry, then what are reavers using to reave?
Third, on 'wavium: As has already been shown in accepted Fenspace fic and mentioned in the above point, every 'waved ship is a weapon. As has been discussed, 'wavium is not intelligent. A necessary corollary to these two data points is that 'wavium cannot prevent itself from being used as a weapon. (Aside: I'll point out that I suggested putting a statement into the rules saying any 'waved weapon was a one-shot deal, but I was out-voted.)
In short, I can't reconcile "reavers" with "no weapons". We've already seen reavers in Fenspace - they underpin the first major story thread - so...

-Rob Kelk
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

OOC: For the purposes of the event, 'today' is Sept. 24th, 2009. Anyone who's in comm distance/receiving distance of Hephaestus, currently outbound to the Belt, is welcome to participate. At the end of my post here, I'm on the surface of Hephaestus whacking golf balls into space for one of the Boys to fetch with, and I have voice-only comms through a few KW of 900mhz radio, mediated by Hermes.
Edit: Added OOC descriptor, changed title to indicate RP, changed comm from 'The Jason' only to all interested parties.
September 23rd, 2009
We're up. Thankfully, atmospheric containment is holding, at least underground. We rigged some of air compressors and pulled the dome empty, basically giving up on the plants.
Pulled the plastic back onto rolls and left the fiberweed frame up. No air, no friction, no drag.

I love it up here. The three of us loaded into one of the Boys this afternoon and just poodled around. Hermes says the orbit is stable right now, we've got a couple of days before we need to do anything to maintain it, and I've got her working a trajectory to the Belt. Nothing to it but to do it, and I want to get full holds before we start thinking of what next.
September 24th, 2009
More on the dome. On our way up, we took a burst from the gun on a USAF interceptor. I'm not sure why he fired, honestly, and I'm not honestly that worried about it.
Seriously. Noone was hurt, and the dome was a LOT less reliable than we thought, so better to find out now.. I guess.
I still wonder why he fired, but I haven't heard anything on the radio, and, well, you can hear a _lot_ up here.
So the dome was punctured, and one of the fiberweeds was snapped, by a bullet. It chain-reactioned out quite a few more, and the structural and atmospheric integrity were compromised. We managed to patch up the rip before we lost much air, but the environmental plants were working overtime, before we locked off the dome and pumped the air out of it.
Repair was going to happen - we would have a dome, come hell or high water, but it wasn't going to happen soon enough to make keeping the shreds of the existing one pressurized make any sense. The 'Carbon Fiberweed' we'd developed had failed utterly, succumbing to the cold of space, most likely. The dessicated carcasses were still fairly tough, but didn't have the tensile strength needed for this.
Hermes lit up the motor at 2am and pointed us at the Belt. I wasn't very amused, but she just looked at me and reminded me how much I'd fretted about liftoff.. Is it possible to lobotomize an AI?
(Edit: No. Not once she's had this long to backup components and put them where you don't know about them, boss! -Hermes)
So we're well on the way to the Belt, and Hermes says she's identified a couple of likely candidates. Today we fashioned airlocks out of 'waved plastic sheet, velcro, zippers, epoxy and 'Wavium. We then updated our design to include painted surfaces, since near-optical quality plastic sheeting ended up being more of a pigeon-into-glass situation than a man-through-the-lock one.
Hephaestus looked strange from the top now. The bright-orange airlocks were very visible, against the grey-green background of dead and dying plant life.
"Hermes, you found anything on the radio bands from 'folk yet?"
"Quite a bit, boss. Private conversations are happening all over the place, with different encryptions and codings, there's some sinusoidal carrier at 1.8ghz that seems organic, and a lot of public stuff in 400 and 900 meg UHF."
"Logical, that. Antennas for that can be very small and simple. Pick a public frequency you like and open me a channel, broadcast."
"You're on, boss."
I looked at the display, Hermes sitting in an old-school Trek workstation with an Ohura earbug sticking out the side of her head, and sighed.
I picked up the handmike and pressed the button.
"This is HSF-000 Hephaestus, KL1XD 'Wire Geek' commanding, and while I'm not, I repeat not, calling an emergency, I'm pretty bloody close. We lost dome containment on the way up, and we're not going to be able to restore it. If there's anyone in the sound of my voice or anyone you know who is a dab hand with domes, or a dab hand with plants.. "
I let up off the mic and considered a moment. Hermes glanced at me inquiringly from the monitor, and I winked at her. There were a couple of responses, and I smiled as I picked the mic back up again.
"Again, this is HSF triple zero Hephaestus, KL1XD 'Wire Geek' commanding. We just got off the dirt and into the Out Here, and we're headed for the Belt. We're a full-service refinery and asteroid mining operation, and dome or not, we will be open for business. Hit us up on this frequency, and we'll be happy to help you with pretty much anything that can be described as 'metal', aside from the music. We also have a few tons of raw organics, a few thousand gallons of basic 'wavium, and a couple of homebuilt strains that you might just be interested in. I'm turning the show over to Hermes, the nice young digital lady who actually runs the place, and lets me push the buttons and look important. She'll tell you where we are, where we're going, and answer any questions you might have."
I put the mic back in its holder, and the TX light clicked back on the radio console as she took over. I smiled at her on the screen as she busily pushed buttons and flipped switches on her console. She looked over at me, still busily working.
"Couple of live wires here, boss, the closest seems to be a gentleman who calls himself "The Jason". He's actually _in_ the Belt now, so I've already altered course to meet him."
"You, my dear, rock. Is the prow pointed forward?"
"does the Pope shit in the woods?"
I grinned, rising from my seat. "I'm going Outside, me and Raven are gonna go play fetch-golf with a couple of the Boys. Keep an ear on the radio, and if someone seems chatty, patch them through to my suit."Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979